Like Lovers Do
by AMRainer
Summary: The meaning of true love - and the many glances Hotch and Emily stole from each other.


**This is the first part of my (hopefully) 3 parts Valentine's gift to my wife, Lorena, the Emily to my Hotch and all of that cheesy shit. She's the best partner I could ask for and I think she deserves all this homage because, sometimes, she's the reasons why I manage to keep going through some rough days. This summarize the feelings of my character towards hers and I do hope that she enjoys it. But I hope you guys enjoy too lol I carry on with my fanfics because of y'all.**

 **Thanks to Hannah for the beta and to Fran for this amazing cover!**

 **And yes, this is my first purely emotional piece. (and I suggest you to read listening to Turning Pages by Sleeping at Last)**

 **Disclaimer: I own nothing and you already know that.**

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 ** _'I would still walk with you to the end of the earth... and then past it.'_**

 ** _\- Igor Oro_**

It struck him out of nowhere, like how a tidal wave covers the land of peaceful beaches and destroys everything within reach. It destroyed him at some points. When he's sharing that room with her in Alaska, the cold night making her shiver ever so slightly under the sheets – while she's calmly asleep in the double bed and he's filling forms after she's insisted that he should at least take the couch if he felt so uncomfortable with lying beside her.

He never told her that he wouldn't feel it at all, that he would enjoy every second of it. But that realization just hit him hours later, and it's the perfect storm. Hazel eyes stared at her, the glimmer of hope and conflict and confusion and everything else. There's warmness inside his chest and he noticed that everything just started to end along with his perception that something had just commenced.

.

And maybe it hadn't just begun to burn. _No_ , Aaron Hotchner was quite sure that it hadn't. From his spot in the armchair, he remembered every fracture of it. Remembered when he first saw her, that split second glance they shared as she stood in the hallway, champagne in hand and black dress cladding her body. The soft waves of her raven-hair as they fell over her bare shoulders and all he could think about was running his fingers through it, feeling the smoothness himself. She turned to him and he was standing there, lamely in his suit and tie and Oxfords that suddenly seemed too big to fit him.

Albeit time and circumstance gave him no chance to speak to her at all, he never forgot the connection. Brown drowning in hazel. It was the first time; it was an unexpected rush of emotions. And when he met her again, he couldn't help the beat that it took for him to recompose himself.

He never thought he would look into those eyes again – or feel any of that. Yet she stood there in front of him, all mature and intriguing and he couldn't help the anger for the way she could break him, defy him, like no one else ever could. She was the _perfect imperfection_ , a mess of dark strands and fair skin.

Then she sacrificed her dreams for him, gave up on her career for his and proved to him that – regardless of their hard restart – she still held the same image of that stranger standing in the dimly lit corridor at that random politics party. Aaron, the man, not the Unit Chief, decided to rely into it when he knocked on her door. Humbly, very much so, opened himself up to her and indirectly, like a schoolboy with his hands tucked in his pockets, asked her to come along for the ride with him.

And she did.

He's never got to thank her. It was so selfish and stupid - but he's sure that she took in the change in his behavior towards her as something. She's always seen good in him. Even when she judged him, even when she spat at him that he didn't trust women as much as men – and she really didn't know that he couldn't trust _himself_ around _her_ and that was the sole reason why.

They followed through. She was there when he lost Haley, his family, everything else that he had worked so hard to get. Because that was the woman. And he never even figured why it seemed like their eyes – _always their eyes_ – were tied to each other. It was much as though she had become his sun. At the same time that he couldn't stop looking at her, he avoided it. He ran away from his feelings, ran away from the warmth and the concern etched in her skin by the instant he told her that his small kingdom of safety and protection was shattered to pieces.

New York came. Damn right, it came and broke and ripped apart all the good and the bad to the point that he had lost his faith. The last couple of years had already taken their tolls on him – Elle, then Gideon, then Haley leaving and his son being taken by her. He was quite sure he couldn't _feel_ anymore. Until the moment that he did. That he almost lost his job, the only that thing he still could use to hide his emotions. It was his last barrier and it was broken.

His injured ear healed along with the way he wouldn't take his sight away from her and her from him. She was silently worried, accepting him gauging her reaction whenever they were given information and he could barely make up the words. He had learned how to read her, how to understand her. And when Nevada came, he couldn't help the way he watched her playing cards and drinking and being so beautifully _human_. She seemed happy, unique, from the flush painting her cheeks to the way she would whip her head back in laughter.

Dave stared at him, shook his head in amusement at Hotch's very lack of awareness to the awe that graced his usually stoic expression. He was lost on her that night. To the point that he couldn't help the morph of his every line, the way his orbs dilated with the simple image of her, the bedroom eyes he would offer her when he caught her mentioning something about starting a family. He wanted that with her, and he ignored the way his focus had solely landed on the brunette before him.

They started to work better together, started to match and to complement each other. Almost like a vase torn to pieces that one takes all the care in order to put all the small fractures back in place. Their vase had flowers – _daisies_ , she chose it and he bought it without a second thought regardless of the fool excuse of masking their intents on interviewing that victim. He also never got to thank that woman for the one thing he gave her – the chance of seeing her put those white, pure petals on her desk.

They lasted for a week, reminded him about the sun that he's always felt that she was to him. The sun and the moon and the whole galaxy altogether, in the form of a person. He wondered if she even knew it, if her choice had been instinctive or dearly thought about. Taking in the latter, he made sure to watch the little things more often.

Then, there was Cooley. There was a sense of pain and hurt and… _nostalgia_ to her that he'd never quite seen before. He hated every minute he had to be hard on her, enraged himself with the job and the orders from above and the biting tone he used. But he had to. And he perceived later, with the snow falling on his shoulders as he watched her from distance that he was angry at himself for not approaching her, for not taking care or not being the person she had decided to open herself up to.

He was jealous. Of any man that touched her – he wanted nothing more than to just wrap his arms around her, take her in an embrace and never let go of her ever again. Shaking his head at that, he followed as if he hadn't pulled all the strings he could have therefore she could achieve some peace of mind over the loss of Matthew. That was his overwhelming need, crave.

Aaron could never anticipate what was about to come. Could never tell that Foyet would take his revenge, would stab him until his vision blurred and he lost his conscience. He never told anyone – perhaps not even himself – but _she_ was the last thing he saw. The gaze they held that one night in the hallway, the first one of so many and he hoped, in the haze of his pain, that it wouldn't be the last.

To his uttermost luck, it wasn't.

And he woke up to that pair of bottomless darkness, her pupils were dilated and if he had an ounce more of strength or carelessness, he would bring her close for a kiss, would plead her to hold him through his disgrace. It never fazed to amaze him how he needn't. How she hovered, gravitated around him like a half of her had been hurt too.

He wanted that to be true. The father of one wanted nothing more than to be the reason why that woman opened her eyes – those _damn_ eyes – every single day of her life. But then, he was the center of her attention, he was the one person she would drive to work and from it every day until she made sure that he could do it by himself.

He'd lost Haley a week after his first lonely ride.

It was the end of a chapter, of the most disastrous and spiraling pages of his entirety. He pulled away, he excused himself from her life to dwell in his sorrow when all he wanted to do was to pour it all out to her. That wasn't him, though. He wasn't that man and maybe she wasn't that woman – but they ached to be so.

There was jealousy in the meanwhile, a new flare of feeling and want and desperation that he hadn't felt for long. Hotch's ear wasn't injured enough to miss the sounds of her pain when there were fists of a vile man attacking her, and when he saw someone else scooting closer, trying to break in, all he could think about was what that Mick _bastard_ Rawson would have done if he had heard and seen her worst. If he had to be the one that held the guilt – even after one year – of that scenario. He bet that he would give up like Aaron himself _never_ did. And he would never do.

.

For a minute, he found himself staring, lips pressed together and his whole life passing in front of his very eyes as he stared shamelessly at her. At her vulnerability and at the way she seemed very much why he's still sitting right there. He didn't want one night – and he realized right there, in that armchair, in that simple coziness – that he wanted every second of it.

He didn't want to wait for their forever; he didn't want anyone else but her. _Emily Prentiss_ , yes. Aaron Hotchner was hopelessly, eternally in love with the dark curtain of hairs to the point that he would give anything to watch as those strands spread on the pillow turned grey and white. The way she would try to fight the effects of age, how she would linger as the _only one_ he loved – yes, he loved her, madly so.

When he left his manila folder behind, crawled in bed after turning off the lamp on the desk, Aaron was certain, for the first time in so long, that if he's still going, functioning, then she's the one to blame. His male arms wrapped around her slim waist, spooned the only person that he didn't want to ever let go of. And it was exhilarating – her coldness melding to his warmth, her back snuggling closer instinctively to the burn of his heart as it set on fire by the simple proximity to her.

.

.

.

"Aaron?", the smile in the tone jolts him to meet the tint of contentment painting her orbs. "You are staring"

He stands, leaves the action jet he's been building for Jack as the thirteen years old boy rests to meet his out-of-reason's present with happiness in the morning after. His gaze never breaks, it's unyielding and he tilts her chin thus she's looking up at him. Brown eyes meet hazel eyes and that instant thrill that runs down his spine, coils his blood and explodes as warmness inside his chest, is still the same as over two decades ago.

The raven-haired male never blinks, doesn't even bother to tear his orbs away from hers. They still dilate, they still reflect an unspeakable tenderness to his appearance. His mouth descends on hers, presses a chaste kiss to that supple part of her afore he envelopes her, rests and lingers his lips on her forehead while they stand in _their_ living room as though she hasn't been suspended, as though everything is calm and even.

He shuts his lids, indulges the feel of her as feminine hands splay on his back. She's there, she's _real_. And he thanks himself every minute for letting himself lie beside her that night, to hold her until duty called.

Because even after so long, even after years apart, years in harmful solitude or imperfect companions, she's still the only pair of eyes that he's capable of allowing himself to wholly lose him on them.

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 **Tell me your thoughts about this pieces, please!**

 **See you next time :)**


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